You Are a Cat!

Meow, Mewl & Maul.
Only you can do it all.
You are Holden Catfield. But your family calls you Holden. Or sometimes Mr. Catfield. You’re a cat! And you just woke up spooned behind the knees of Julie, the daughter in the dysfunctional family you live with. It’s a brand new Caturday! What are you going to do? Unlike dogs, you do what you want!
If you decide to go back to bed, turn to page 17. Venture outside and visit your girlfriend on page 8, or head further downtown to page 35. The choice is yours! But beware, being a cat isn’t all napping in sunbeams and curling up on laps. There are funny noises coming from the upstairs bathroom, a tomcat in the alley who doesn’t like to be crossed, and a strange man on the corner who is always giving you free samples of catnip...
Inspired by the gamebook fad of the ’80s — You Are a Cat! is lavishly illustrated from the first-person feline floor purrspective. The complete package from writer & artist Sherwin Tjia, whose graphic novel The Hipless Boy was nominated for a Doug Wright Award & four Ignatz Awards, the kittenish & catactular You Are a Cat! is a catventure you won’t forget & the closest you’ll come to being a cat without dying & reincarnating as one

duck2ducks's Thoughts:

An incredibly fun - and frankly odd - venture into the genre of interactive fiction, in this case being a story which places you in the paws of a furry feline. What makes this so unexpectedly appealing, though, is how blithely it plays the conceit completely straight; this is not, after all, a book in which you play a cat in the throes of an action adventure (aside from moments when you might be on the run from malicious dogs or foul-mannered people). Instead, this is a book where you decide whether to stroll the neighborhood or take a nap indoors; whether to fight with an alley cat or turn tail and flee; whether to purr when your owner pets you, or sit in impassive, stony silence.

And though this sounds like a hilarious gimmick, it also sounds fairly one-note. Thankfully, however, it's not! The author's inviting prose enlivens both humdrum and kitty terror alike, and the fact that all (non-lethal) plot branches eventually feed back into the same ending makes the re-selecting of alternate choices far easier than usual. Speaking of the ending, by the way, be prepared that the incredibly detailed family dynamic that's described over the course of the story ends up boiling over into an unexpectedly dark climax, but at least there is one not-quite-as-bleak ending (in addition to the one that very much is). A bit of a surprise, to be sure, though not one that necessarily detracts overmuch.

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